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I joined a discussion about the best skirmisher unit at the Steam site. Since what I know seemed to be news, I thought I would continue the discussion here. Normal foot skirmishers are clearly labeled as only "Good Skirmishers" (and these are Cretan Archers), Light Cavalry as "Superior Skirmishers" and the Phanagerian Horse archers as "Exceptional Skirmishers". The values for "fatigue margin" are only listed for ranged combat units, so by logical deduction is not a melee unit feature. The 2nd pic shows what exceptional skirmishers can do to the enemy.

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For new players: Grand Strategy AAR and Steam Guide: Tips for new players

The values for "fatigue margin" are only listed for ranged combat units, so by logical deduction is not a melee unit feature. The 2nd pic shows what exceptional skirmishers can do to the enemy.

The manual says what the Skirmisher trait does:

Manual 10.7.5. wrote:* Some units have the skirmisher trait. Even if they lose a duel, if the enemy margin is not big enough, the winner will lose one effectiveness point

Standard (medium) cavalry share the trait although they have no ranged attack, among other melee units such as the Brythonic Warriors available to Britonae. I see foot archers do that kind of damage regularly, even though their fatigue margin is not so hot. Their actual ranged attack value is about the same as with horse archers.

I was under the impression that it was the 'ranged attack' value which determines your chances of hitting a unit, and the 'max damage' which determines how much fatigue each arrow causes. The best skirmishers I've found are the archers; 9 ranged attack (8 in the case of mountaineers) and max damage 2. I haven't seen a max damage three unit.

For what it's worth, I ran this test with the same stack reloading to change to 8 Cretan Archers, or 8 Light Cavalry and then 8 Alani Horse Archers (who also have fatigue margin of 10). So Light cav. did as well as the Alani (5 exhaustion) and both did only slightly better than Cretan archers (4 exhaustion) in this one case. I can not get the screenshots to post.

For new players: Grand Strategy AAR and Steam Guide: Tips for new players

All 14 Horse archers caused "Exhaustion" in their target. You get that regularly with foot skirmishers?

I haven't bothered to actually count, but in the campaign I'm wrapping up as Aethiopia against the Seleucids in a multiplayer game, having a support line of foot archers (empirically very different in effectiveness compared to the basic foot skirmishers) has resulted in decisive victory every engagement due to the enemy's Effectiveness getting mowed down, regardless of whether they had light cavalry or foot skirmishers for their support line.

Swuul, we may both be correct. The statement under whether the game considers a skirmisher as Good, Superior or Exceptional mentions "Extra fatigue margin". So the mechanic is what you describe, plus an "extra fatigue margin" caused by the unit. I know when I was testing this last January, Light cav. was superior to skirmishers and Horse archers were exceptional.

Soar, I believe that a ranged attack is indeed devastating. Trained foot archers can accomplish this. However, the game itself differentiates between a good skirmisher and an exceptional one. If one unit has a combat valuer of 20 and another 10, then we all know which is the better unit for combat. We don't have a handle on what "extra fatigue margin" seems to indicate. For me it is the deciding factor for ranged combat.

For new players: Grand Strategy AAR and Steam Guide: Tips for new players

Gray Fox, what was your sample size? Did you run the test once or repeatedly? Also, if you're reloading a save, I think the die rolls seed or something, as I fought the same battle multiple times once and seemed to get the same result each time. Possibly a mechanic to prevent save scumming.

As I posted, I only did it once with each different skirmisher. I was not attempting a science experiment. I just wanted to see if it was even possible to set up something that could create useful data. I had one stack with a 0-0 general with all the units in it. Then I saved and split off the skirmisher groups that I didn't use and ran the battle. As you mention, this may not even produce anything useful, because of variables we don't know of. So we have two paths to go. We already understand everything and extra fatigue margin is an aberration to be discarded. Or, maybe this is something, so how do we find out. I'm for finding out.

For new players: Grand Strategy AAR and Steam Guide: Tips for new players

Swuul, we may both be correct. The statement under whether the game considers a skirmisher as Good, Superior or Exceptional mentions "Extra fatigue margin". So the mechanic is what you describe, plus an "extra fatigue margin" caused by the unit.

I think you have seriously misunderstood something. The extra Fatigue Margin just means by how much the skirmisher can lose the combat rolls in melee phase to still cause a fatigue hit. Normal aka "Good" skirmishers can cause a fatigue hit if they lose by up to 3 points, the truly exceptional can cause a fatigue hit even if they lose by 10.

For example of melee phase fight between a Heavy Infantry and a Skirmisher:
Let us say the value for combat is 8 for the Heavy infantry and 4 for the Skirmisher. The Heavy infantry rolls a 6 so final combat roll is 8+6=14, the Skirmisher rolls a 6 so final result is 4+6=10. Thus the Heavy infantry causes on the Skirmisher 4 hits, of which the skirmisher Evades the first hit, thus 3 hits which are 2 fatigue hits and 1 health hits. The skirmisher deals nothing to the Heavy Infantry, unless it has extra Fatigue Margin of 5 or more (ie they have to be at least Superior Skirmishers), in which case it would deal exactly one fatigue hit on the Heavy Infantry.

Unlike you seem to think, that has absolutely nothing to do with the ranged phase of combat (which happens before the melee phase). The only thing that matters during the Ranged phase for the fatigue hits are the effective Ranged Attack (of the attacker) and effective Ranged Defense (of the reciever).

There are three kinds of people, those who can count and those who can't.

P.S. I seriously understand "Exhaustion" though. The effect exists in at least three levels, wherein the affected unit suffers -1, -2 or -3 to the die roll. I don't have a pic for -1, perhaps because I use Exceptional skirmishers. So not all skirmishers are alike because they don't cause the same extent of exhaustion.

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The level of "Exhaustion" after ranged phase depends just on how much fatigue hits the unit has taken in this (and previous, if this is not the first combat of the turn) ranged phases, plus how many fatigue hits the unit has taken in possible previous melee fights (plus possible fatigue hits from bad weather).

The "damage" number next to Ranged attack number (which is a 1 or 2) tells how many fatigue points a successful ranged attack deals to the target. Again, that has absolutely nothing to do with extra fatigue margin.

Slightly off-topic, and I am sure you all know this, but I will mention this anyway. Fatigue drops Effectiveness temporalily. And as you of course know, Effectiveness affects the minimum diceroll in melee phase (so a unit with zero Effectiveness and zero Experience will roll 0-9, while a unit in similar conditions otherwise but Effectiveness 3 would roll in melee 3-9). In addition, Exhaustion drops the actual combat value of the unit temporalily.

There are three kinds of people, those who can count and those who can't.

"10.7.3. Ranged combat phase
All units with some ranged capacity will fire against the enemy in this
phase. Some units can only hit the enemy frontline, some can reach
the enemy support line or even the reserve units.126
In term of gameplay, the mechanics used are the same as the duel
process (10.7.4).
A ranged attack can never kill a unit, only inflict fatigue and tired
or exhausted units then will have an extra penalty in the duel phase.
It is resolved by matching pairs of units. An already fatigued
target is less likely to be selected if non-fatigued targets are available.
Frontline units will be matched against frontline units as far as possible
(remember that in this phase some of your skirmishers are deployed at
the front) and a given unit may be attacked more than once.
While it may sound as if ranged combat is relatively unimportant,
an army with either few ranged units or skirmishers will suffer badly
against a better balanced opponent. Being fatigued in the duel combat
phase is a serious handicap."

I can only attest that none of the above units were hit twice. As in the other pics I've posted, each horse archer shot at their own target. Also, "A ranged attack can never kill a unit, only inflict fatigue" indicates that the ranged combat inflicts fatigue, only.

Continuing:

"Support units provide one third of their ranged attack strength if
they belong to the support category or +1 if it is a melee type unit, to
the strength of the relevant combat units."

Exhausted units do not provide support, as Jagger2002 posted.

The melee "duel" is then described with the following portion pertaining to the ranged combat effect:

"Step Three: Each D10 has a guaranteed minimum value determined
as 1 plus unit experience (from 0-3 depending on if it is a recent recruit
or an elite unit) and its current effectiveness (from 0 to 2 for a fresh,
properly supplied, unit). Any dice with a value below this level128
will be rerolled until it, at least, matches the minimum value (and it
can, as a result of this process, exceed the minimum).

In effect an exhausted elite unit may be beaten by a fresh recently
recruited formation, especially if it is badly led and dependent on just
one D10. On the other hand, this process will mean that well trained
fresh troops are effective, even if in less than ideal terrain."

So, Units that were hit once in ranged combat suffered -1, -2 or -3 Exhaustion effect to their combat rating. The game differentiates between Good, Superior and Exceptional skirmishers and quantifies these with a numerical value that is perhaps not understood, but beyond dispute. Exceptional is better than good and 10 is more than 3. It follows that better skirmishers cause greater exhaustion.

For new players: Grand Strategy AAR and Steam Guide: Tips for new players

I'll try to make a simple as possible list for the other readers who might find this confusing (which it really isn't).

1) Only Ranged Attack (of the shooter) and Ranged Defence (of the reciever) matter in ranged phase.
2) Each succesful ranged attack does exactly 1 or 2 points of fatigue damage (it is listed for each unit; most have 1 damage, but there are a few (like some of the horse archers) who deal 2 fatigue damage).
3) Extra Fatigue Margin has *absolutely nothing* to do with ranged combat. Absolutely nothing. It is only used in *melee phase* of combat, and *only* if the skirmisher loses the melee "duel".

There are three kinds of people, those who can count and those who can't.

I don't want to argue. We can discuss the evidence, but you have to present some. Why do you believe that extra fatigue margin deals with the melee phase? I posted from the manual that fatigue is caused in the ranged phase by skirmishers. Where does it substantiate what you are posting?

For new players: Grand Strategy AAR and Steam Guide: Tips for new players

I give up. If you want to believe there is some fuzzy magic going on in ranged combat, then by all means continue to believe so. There are people who believe the Earth is flat, so this is pretty minor compared to that. I for one just would hope such silly ideas would not be spread around to confuse people.

EDIT: Is there really no ignore function on this forum? Hadn't thought of it before, but I don't seem to find it.

There are three kinds of people, those who can count and those who can't.

I don't want to argue. We can discuss the evidence, but you have to present some. Why do you believe that extra fatigue margin deals with the melee phase? I posted from the manual that fatigue is caused in the ranged phase by skirmishers. Where does it substantiate what you are posting?

'Fatigue Margin' only applies to melee phase. This is only about by how much you can lose a duel and still have the winner suffers 1 effectiveness loss.